Democrats are working to pass legislation that will extend unemployment benefits, but it faces GOP opposition. “Republicans in the Senate will likely do everything they can to stand in the way of a bill projected to add $123 billion to the deficit,” wrote Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney. So far, there’s been no action on this measure in the House or Senate. OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower recently noted the extent private companies sometimes go in order to deny unemployment benefits.

House Republicans, led by Eric Cantor (VA), are channeling American Idol. They’ve started a program called “YouCut,” an election-year gimmick where people can vote online for services they’d like to see cut from the budget. The winners would be pushed by the GOP for elimination.

Current issues on the virtual cutting block, for example, include the Byrd Honors Scholarships, a proposed federal employee pay raise, federal land purchases, and UNESCO.

House Republicans have chosen to make our tattered Social Safety Net into a game. Chock full of ideological misrepresentations, the site “You Cut” asks its followers to vote on which federal programs should get the ax in the federal budgetary funding process. Flaunted as the “First Winning Cut,” is $2.5 billion in proposed TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Emergency Fund money. Says the site: “This program was recently created to incentivize states to increase their welfare caseloads without requiring able-bodied adults to work, get job training, or otherwise prepare to move off of taxpayer assistance…

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities affirms that the TANF Emergency Fund does not in anyway incentivize an increase in caseloads nor undercut welfare reform, as the “You Cut” propaganda asserts. It explains, in a recent publication, that TANF recipients remain fully subject to all the stringent work requirements of the TANF program. One could argue that these requirements make no sense whatsoever during this time of high unemployment, but the TANF Emergency Fund does not alter this unfortunate reality.

Let’s work together with sensible policymakers to create, rather than further tatter, an effective safety net so that we may all weather the current economic storm and those to come. We can start by recognizing the need for continued funding of the TANF Emergency Fund.

Lord Palmerston—twice England’s prime minister during the middle 1800s—once commented, “England has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” Watching the fallout over Brazil’s and Turkey’s recent diplomatic breakthrough on Iran brings Palmerston’s observation to mind: while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hailing our “friends” support for tough sanctions aimed at Teheran, much of her supporting cast were busy hedging their bets and deciding that their interests just might lay elsewhere.

True, Russia and China signed on, but their endorsements were filled with ambiguity and diplomatic escape hatches.

As Clinton was dismissing the efforts of Brazil and Turkey, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said his country “expressed its welcome and appreciation for the diplomatic efforts of all parties.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman added that the agreement to send 58 percent of Iran’s nuclear fuel to Turkey for enrichment “will benefit the process of peacefully resolving the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for “urgent consultations with all interested parties, including Iran, to decide what to do next,” hardly a call to arms. His First Deputy Prime Minister, Sergi Ivanov, said that while his country was “supportive” of the U.S., it was drawing a “red line” at sanctions that were “suffocating” or would affect ordinary Iranians.

He then added a pinch of Palmerston: “We have a completely different position. We have a trading relationship, and the potential to develop it. We have energy interests, human interests, and tourism.”

The Russians also made it clear that they would be unhappy with unilateral sanctions by the U.S. and the European Union. Such unilateral actions would be “of an extraterritorial nature beyond the agreed decision of the international community and contradicting the principle of the rule of international law, enshrined in the UN Charter,” according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The U.S. State Department’s claim that the “international community” is behind the U.S. is increasingly sounding like whistling past the graveyard.

Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna said the Brazil/Turkey/Iran deal was “a constructive move,” and pointed out that India has a “deep desire to have a friendly relationship” with Iran. He also pointed out that “The U.S. has its own foreign policy and India has its own.”

The Arab League’s General Secretary Amr Moussa said he hoped the agreement would “solve the current problem regarding the Iranian nuclear file.”

United Nation Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “We hope that this and other initiatives may open the door to a negotiated settlement.”

France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy, normally hawkish on Iran, called the deal a “positive step.”

Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Supreme Commander, U.S. Admiral James Stavridis said the fuel swap deal was a “a potentially good development.”

This should hardly come as a surprise; just follow the ruble, the yuen, and the franc.

In his visit to Ankara earlier this month, Medvedev said, “Russia and Turkey are strategic partners, not only in words but genuinely.” That was certainly strange talk about a key member of NATO with which Moscow has gone to war in the past.

But with rubles at stake, who worries about history?

Medvedev and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed 17 agreements worth some $25 billion, including building four nuclear power plants. The two countries also discussed Russian participation in a Black Sea- Mediterranean pipeline that would make Ankara a player in the Central Asia energy game. The Turks also seem to be more favorably disposed toward Moscow’s South Stream natural gas pipeline to Europe.

And lastly, the Russian president said he would push to raise bilateral trade from $40 billion a year to $100 billion within five years.

If the U.S. thinks the Russians are going to have a falling out with the Turks over the Iran sanctions, then delusion is the order of the day in Washington.

And China? Brasilia’s number one trading partner, which loaned Petrobras $10 billion to develop Brazil’s huge South Atlantic subsalt oil deposits? And just signed an agreement with Brasilia to develop a joint defense industry (no doubt lured by the $20-plus billion that Brazil is handing out in defense contracts)? Will China go to the mat for the U.S. over the Iran sanctions? See “order of the day” above.

France appears to be playing the dog that didn’t bark. Might Gallic discreetness have anything to do with a $12 billion defense deal with Brazil for 50 helicopters and four Scorpene submarines? Could it be the $10.2 billion Brasilia is shelling out for 36 of France’s Rafale fighter jets? The Rafale is very a cute airplane, not terribly fast, that came in third in an open competition with fighters made by Boeing and Saab. But as Rhys Thompson of ISN Security Watch notes, “The Brazilian government reiterated that the final choice of a fighter jet would be based on political and strategic considerations and not primarily guided by technical aspects.” In short, we buy your cookies, you be nice to us in return (and maybe lower European Union tariffs for Brazilian agricultural goods).

As more and more countries line up behind the Turkish-Brazilian deal, it looks less and less likely that the Security Council will pass sanctions, in part because the deal is a good one and represents a sea change in international power relations. But also because countries like Russia, China, India, and France are also keeping Lord Palmerston’s dictum in mind.

If we know that some of the biggest and most important demonstrations in Washington DC only get a smidgen of news coverage, then it’s no surprise that things deserving at least that much get no coverage at all. Last Saturday, May 22nd was one of those demonstrations brought to you by an IPS exclusive.

Because the Cuban Interest Section (CIS) is located here, DC has seen this one before and it’s usually a fairly interesting spectacle.

Three (3) anti-Castro Cubans protested across the street from the Interest Section to “honor” the birthday of Jose Marti and to protest the Cuban government. In response two or three dozen people opposed to US policy toward Cuba and in solidarity with the Cuban people counter demonstrated on the other side, in front of the CIS. Apparently the petition that had circulated toward the end of last year, “Acting on Our Conscience: A Declaration of African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba” didn’t affect the support from the significantly African participation of the counter-demonstrators. The whole group, in fact, was reasonably multi-ethnic.

Earlier this month, as you no doubt have heard, the American Academy of Pediatrics moderated its policy on female circumcision. As a preventive measure to keep families from taking their daughters outside the country for full circumcision procedures, its committee on bioethics suggested that doctors perform a “ritual nick.” Right or wrong, it provides plenty of fodder for the hard right. For example, at Jihad Watch, blogger Marisol wrote:

This decision — to approve of the idea of a “ritualized nick” on a girl’s genitalia — is as pointless as it is dangerous. For those who insist on following prescribed degrees of mutilation, which are primarily enforced in Muslim countries, a token gesture will not be enough to keep them from traveling overseas or seeking a more severe form of the practice wherever they can. And the girl still suffers the trauma of a ritualized sexual assault — potentially twice, if, for example, the “nick” is the parents’ ruse to throw health care providers off the trail of further intended damage, or if they simply change their minds.

It’s probably academic since U.S. federal law prevents “any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of females. But do Focal Points readers agree with Jihad Watch in this instance? Is this cultural relativism run amok? Or does the American Academy of Pediatrics have its heart in the right place?

Oops. Why did the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which triggered an environmental catastrophe seem so out of the blue? Well, for starters, if you were relying on the major media for any information about offshore oil drilling’s safety, you would have known not to fret. OtherWords partner Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has compiled a list of at least 10 examples of prominent examples of ill-timed industry boosterism, which followed President Barack Obama’s lead when he declared a new push for offshore drilling on March 31 and asserted that “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills” on April 2. Here are a few of the most striking comments.

“Some of the most ironic objections come from those who say offshore exploration will destroy beaches and coastlines, citing the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska as an example. The last serious spill from a drilling accident in U.S. waters was in 1969, off Santa Barbara, California.” –USA Today editorial (4/2/10)

“Drilling could be conducted in an environmentally sensitive manner. We already drill in an environmentally sensitive manner.” –Sean Hannity, Fox News’ Hannity (4/1/10)

“And even in terms of the environment, we’re going to consume oil one way or the other. It’s safer for the planet if it’s done under our strict controls and high technology in America as opposed to Nigeria…. We’ve got a ton of drilling happening every day today in the Gulf of Mexico in a hurricane area and it’s successful.” –Charles Krauthammer, WJLA’s Inside Washington (4/4/10)

“You know, there are a lot of serious people looking at, “Are there ways that we can do drilling and we can do nuclear that are–that are nowhere near as risky as what they were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago?” Offshore drilling today is a lot more safer, in many ways, environmentally, today than it was 20 years ago.” –David Gergen, CNN’s Situation Room (3/31/10)

Activists are urging Congress to stop wasting so much money on what increasingly look like futile wars. New websites are springing up to oppose the latest “emergency” $33 billion supplemental budget that would bring the total tab so far on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $1 trillion, while supporting candidates who want to stop the endless fighting. Some lawmakers are already on board. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), for example, recently introduced the War is Making You Poor Act which would force the Pentagon to pay for the wars out of its regular budget (which currently stands at $549 billion). Some of the savings would cut the budget deficit by $16 billion. The rest would enable American taxpayers to exempt their first $35,000 in earnings from taxes. “The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars,” Grayson wrote in a Daily Kos blog post.

“We in Haiti are committed to staying a county where organic, biological agriculture dominates. We know that Clinton and the multinationals, the IMF and the WTO, have another plan for us – one based on the import of GM seeds and food aid, one based on making us grow for export, including growing for agro-diesel. But we’re putting on pressure to say: no, that’s not what Haiti needs, here is what popular Haitian organizations want, here is our agenda.” Part of an interview by associate fellow Bev Bell.

People in the Marshall Islands have sacrificed their health and their homeland for U.S. national security interests, writes Bob Alvarez. The Obama administration should correct this injustice.

FPIF columnist Walden Bello explains how and why the riots in Thailand occurred.

If you can’t join us at IPS to see noted author and Hampshire College professor Michael Klare, whose latest book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet describes the geopolitics of the energy crisis, talk about the causes behind the Gulf oil spill, join us for the online webcast from 12-1:30.

For most Americans, Kyrgyzstan is the most unpronounceable of the six “stans” that constituted the former Soviet Union’s southern flank. It has little in the way of wealth or natural resources, but it has what every real estate agent looks for: location, location, location. Bordered by Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and China, the mountainous nation is the U.S.’s wedge into Central Asia, and its umbilical cord to the war in Afghanistan.

Much of the oil and fuel that keep the U.S. war machine running comes through Kyrgyzstan’s Manas Air Base, a sprawling complex close to the country’s capital. In March of this year, 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops moved through the base. Indeed, without Manas, it is hard to conceive how the U.S. could support the current surge of troops into Southern Afghanistan.

Because Afghanistan is landlocked, the logistics of supplying fuel, food and weapons to U.S. troops is daunting. While it costs about $400,000 a year to support a soldier in Iraq, the price tag in Afghanistan is $1 million. According to U.S. Marine Gen, James T. Conway, gasoline costs $400 a gallon in Afghanistan.

It now appears that since 1991 the U.S. has been bribing Kyrgyz politicians through two shadowy companies, Mina Corp. Ltd and Red Star Enterprises, both registered in Britain and British-controlled Gibraltar. The latter is little more than a big rock and a tax dodge.

According to The New York Times, the ousted president skimmed as much as $8 million a month off the no-bid contracts. So far, the Obama administration is stonewalling the bribery charges, but the House National Security Oversight Subcommittee is sniffing around the issue.

But the U.S. is interested in more than fuel costs in Central Asia.

Kyrgyzstan borders China’s volatile Xingjian Autonomous Region, where local Uyghur anger at the growing influx of Han into the area has touched off several riots over the past few years. There is also a nascent Islamic resistance movement in parts of the region. If the U.S. wanted to stir up trouble for China in its restive west—and maybe peek into its military deployment in the area—Kyrgyzstan is the place to be.

So far, Beijing has been quiet on the recent revolution, merely commenting, “China hopes that relevant issues will be settled in a lawful way.” China is Kyrgyzstan’s number one trading partner, and it is clearly concerned about the quarter of a million Uyghurs residing in Kyrgyzstan.

There is certainly suspicion by the Russians that the U.S. would like to rope countries along its southern border into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a distrust for which one can hardly fault them. In spite of assurances given to the Russians that NATO would not expand into former Soviet states, or recruit ex-members of the Warsaw Pact, NATO now counts Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, the Czech Republic, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia among its members and was on the verge of recruiting Georgia before its 2008 war with Russia.

Following a February tour of Central Asia, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S.’s special representative to Afghanistan, proposed expanding NATO’s reach into the region as a foil to organizations like al-Qaeda. A recent NATO report calls for the Alliance to “help shape a more stable and peaceful international security environment,” the rationale for its current deployment in Afghanistan.

The U.S.’s sponsorship of the Islamic radicalism to destabilize Afghanistan in the 1980s is certainly in the back of the Russian’s mind, which is already concerned about Islamic extremism in places like Chechnya. The region has a number of Islamic groups in the wings, and if the Afghan War really does wind down, there will be plenty of battle-hardened recruits coming home to fill the ranks of those groups.

Most the nations in the region are tied together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), whose meeting this June in Tashkent will likely focus on the situation in Kyrgyzstan. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a military alliance that also includes a number of countries in the area, has been working to stabilize the situation. Kazakhstan currently chairs the OSCE and had already sent a representative to Bishkek.

If the current situation remains regional, then there are organizations in place that can play an important role in defusing the instability. But if Kyrgyzstan becomes a pawn on a larger board, then the “Great Game” will shift from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the rest of Central Asia, with all the pain and misery that follows in the wake of imperial maneuvering.